The EUCHARIST:

ONLY a symbol?

I wrote the following message as part of a discussion
on the Greeley List (Greeley@vm.temple.edu) on 3 January 1998. After
sending it to the Vatican2 List as well, I received so many requests for
permission to forward or repost that I decided to put it on the web.

OF COURSE, the Eucharist is a symbol! That's
what St. Augustine called it in the 4th century of the Christian era: Jesus
is present in the Eucharist "per modum symboli"! The priest is not
a mere magician and bread and wine don't physically become flesh
and blood (until they do it in us, after we have partaken of them in a
spirit of communion and love). The problem is linguistic and has to do
with the contemporary popular understanding of the term symbol. As soon
as you say it is "only" a symbol you give the impression that a symbol
is less than physical reality, when in fact it is more! The
best way to try to recover some of the Augustinan meaning of the term symbol
is to imagine how it would make you feel if someone were to come into your
house and cut up a picture of someone you love, a parent, child, spouse.
On the one hand, this is "only" a piece of paper with pigment, and no more
valuable than junk mail you throw out. On the other hand, quite non-rationally,
there is a surplus of meaning here, something intangible, a presence of
the one who is portrayed and who is evoked in the image. This is the way
Jesus is symbolically, sacramentally present in the consecrated bread and
the wine, only much more so! And just as the same picture has special meaning
for you but means nothing at all to some stranger, so the Eucharist has
a special significance for believers but is simply ordinary bread and wine
for those outside the Christian community.

Augustine defined the term sacrament as "a sign
of sacred reality" and as "a visible word" (communication from God). He
did not distinguish between the outer sign and the invisible reality
which it signifies. There is no way that Augustine could have imagined
the kind of superficial connection we have in mind when we say "only a
symbol." Our (mis)understanding of "symbol" goes back to the late Middle
Ages. Our current limited and often technical and rigid understanding of
"sacrament" is the result of medieval tendencies to codify and standardize.
In the first few centuries of Christianity, mysteria (sacramenta) designated
the symbols and rituals in which believers participated in order to become
and remain part of the life of Christ.

A symbol is not a poor substitute for something
which is absent. A symbol discloses and manifests what is PRESENT!
A symbol reveals that which is hidden, concealed. A symbol allows us to
see beneath the surface, beyond the horizon. A symbol is active, it evokes
and--like a familiar smell that calls forth memories--touches an entire
spectrum of consciousness beyond/beneath the merely rational. As David
Tracy noted, the symbolic or analogical imagination is a special Catholic
gift, something the intensity of which distinguishes Catholics from members
of other denominations and religions.

This ability to "think analogically" involves
linking abstract concepts with concrete examples and thinking in terms
of "both-and" rather than "either-or" (in fact, all Christians think both
in terms of "both-and" and in terms of "either-or" but that for Catholics
the "both-and" approach predominates and for Protestants the "either-or"
approach predominates). The "analogical imagination" involves making connections
and discovering ever new ways of illuminating human existence. That's why
Jesus told parables!

The Eucharist is not a sign of the physical
Jesus but of the Risen Christ. It calls us to allow death to give birth
to life and despair to turn into hope. It calls us to be lovers of others
as we are loved. In us, as we metabolize the bread and the wine and turn
human cells into thought and action, Divinity takes on flesh (as It manifests
Itself thorughout the cosmos) in a very special way, and allows us to take
part in God's saving activities.

Keep in mind that there are only two sacraments
specifically mentioned in the New Testament (the authors of the NT believed
the end of time was near, and there was no need for setting up elaborate
structures for the future), the cleansing and regenerating initiation of
baptism and the life-sustaining sharing of bread during the Lord's Supper.
On the other hand, it is obvious that the first Christians considered their
entire life with its everyday interactions as sacramental (Karl Rahner
recovered this vision of sacrament in his famous term: "sacramentality
of the world" which Greeley applies to his notion of sexuality as sacrament,
that is, LOVE-MAKING as sacrament.) World and worship were one! The Eucharistic
focus wasn't on bread and wine; it was on the communal action of breaking
and sharing bread which was in turn understood as symbolic of God's ongoing
nurturing of the people--in other words, the mutual outflowing and inflowing
of sustaining divine love into and through the people. There was not even
a standardized formula for what we call the "words of institution." And
the bread was baked by the participants (and touched by the hands of presiders
and laity during the sharing!).

For the first Christians, still close to the wonder
of the presence of Jesus among them, life was somehow experienced as drenched
in sacramentality, but no one kept track of individual sacraments.
The list of seven sacraments wasn't established until the 12th century,
and only gradually did sacraments turn into individualistic and almost
mechanistic tools for salvation from their origin as fluid communal actions
and interactions. Tables turned into altars and presiders into celibate
priests, set ever more apart from the people of God. The Second Vatican
Council went back to many of the original roots of the sacraments and recaptured
much of the communal aspect.

Let's remember that Holy Communion (to use the
"old" term) is fundamentally an Easter celebration of thanksgiving (that's
the meaning of the term "Eucharist") for the life-giving love of YHWH (celebrated
in the Jewish Passover) linked to the life-giving sacrifice and love of
Jesus the Christ who represents God's gift of Godself to the people. The
Eucharist is an invitation for us to love; it is the kindling spark that
should ignite love within us, transform us, and charge us with the power
to live our lives--every mundane part of our lives--in a spirit of joyful
generosity and sharing.

God is Love!

Peace, Ingrid

The following is a message I sent to the Vatican2
list (vatican2@vm.temple.edu) on 7 April 1998 as part of a dicussion of
President and Mrs. Clinton's reception of the Eucharist during their recent
visit to Africa.

MY EXPLANATION for the Eucharistic mystery
is that it is activated in and through the love and faith of the recipient
and that consequently there may indeed be a difference in which communion
is experienced by the Catholic or Orthodox Christian, the Protestant Christian,
and the non-Christian. Consecration does not transform the bread
and wine for anyone except the believer. If a bird eats crumbs of a communion
wafer or brings them to her young, God, I am sure delights in providing
nourishment, but the birds are not taking communion. The notion that
there is some sort of sacrilege taking place if the consecrated bread is
touched by the wrong hands or eaten by the unworthy or non-Catholic seems
to me the kind of superstition which is rooted in a an overly literal
understanding of the sacrament as some magic object of an exclusive cult
that may only be received by the properly initiated. It also sets up walls
between people!

I realize that ushers are still supposed to watch
that people don't sneak out of church with a host in their pocket, but
I don't agree with the thinking leading to that practice either.
It simply means to me that the official Church hasn't quite accepted its
own current teachings on Eucharist. Clearly, if any exceptions are
made to the "only Catholics may receive communion rule" (and such exceptions
are made, as the current discussion shows) then the entire interpretation
of the meaning of "Real Presence" and communion in general must be reconsidered.
The following is an attempt to reconcile the inclusive and exclusive views
into a paradigmatically Catholic "both-and" understanding.

The Eucharist has many layers of meaning, and
I am convinced that some of those layers can be experienced by all humans,
others by all Christians, and the final one by (most) believing Catholics.
Christ shares himself with us in countless ways, but surely one of the
most essential ways is in the form of the shared meal of celebration (such
as the various Pesah Seders of this season, complete with their cups of
blessing and matzah). I believe that we *must* begin to practice intercommunion
in order to heal the broken body of Christ and allow communion to become
COMMUNION!

You wondered how the academics among us would
feel if just anyone could ask for a Ph.D. and receive it without having
gone through years of graduate study. I don't like this analogy at
all because to me that's not what the Eucharist is about. It's not
a reward we get for studying, or some sort of privilege we must earn; it's
an invitation for co-celebration and discovering Christ each in the other.
My neighbor need not be a Catholic or a Christian to be Christ for me.
In fact, for Shusaku Endo, the Catholic Japanese novelist, Christ appears
in the guise of a stray cur or minah bird. Eucharist is agape, love,
connectedness, laughter, celebration, remembrance, shared bread and wine,
shared humanity, shared divinity. Eucharist is not exclusive, it
unites and connects, though, as I said before, it will not be experienced
in the same way by all who partake.

One analogy that comes to mind is the analogy
of watching a technicolor movie on a black and white television versus
watching it on a color screen. It's the same movie, but those who watch
it in color see more than those who watch it in black and white. All are
invited but some will see more clearly or deeply than the others.

As for me, I am delighted that the Clintons received
communion, especially in Africa!